


between the never and the night

by endae



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alcohol, Angst, Anxiety, Fights, Forduary, Forduary 2020, Gen, Isolation, Loneliness, Paranoia, Pre-Portal Incident (Gravity Falls), Regret, Survival, Suspense, Week Two: Trust/Paranoia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23332624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endae/pseuds/endae
Summary: There were five times he was immersed in the darkness, and one time he cowered at the light.For Forduary Week 2: Trust/Paranoia.
Relationships: Ford Pines & Stan Pines
Comments: 2
Kudos: 51





	between the never and the night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fex_libris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fex_libris/gifts).



> An extremely late Forduary and belated bday gift for [fex](https://fexiled.tumblr.com/) ❤️ that being said, they wished for a metric ton of angst. Happy birthday friend!

* * *

When Ma turns out the lights to their room, he can’t decide between letting his imagination run wild or anchoring it down with a book.

So he does both.

There’s a new one in his lap each time, a new thought in his brain paired with it. Like moths to a flame, they flock to him, budding curiosities drawn to the embers inside his head. They’re almost prophetic, these moments, when it feels like the pieces are falling into place, when the world outside is quiet _—_ that is, as quiet as it can be on this block of town.

There’s a comfort in these hours. He’s always felt that. It’s when the soft nightlight in the corner of the room, like clockwork, illuminated the warmest glow. It’s always right before bed that he feels the lightening in his veins, the need to channel it somewhere.

He sees colors in the shapes across the ceiling, an aurora borealis cast across the walls. Either an illusion of his eyes, or the extraterrestrial priming him for an extraction, he doesn’t care. It’s wonder in its purest form.

If this is how every night is supposed to feel, tomorrow has never felt so promising.

He breathes in, and he may as well be breathing for the first time.

When he stares out the window, the sense of glory it fills him with feels like a potential untapped. The epiphany comes, and it comes anything but quiet. He hears the restless seagulls squawking in the distance. City-bound busses rumble in the streets, and there’s a blaring car alarm somewhere deeper in town. It’s close to midnight that he’s sitting in his bunk, but in right this moment, feeling higher than all of Glass Shard Beach.

Like a crossroads of his life, he feels it.

He was born for things greater than this.

He always imagined it would come with fireworks and fanfare. But it’s here in the dark of his bedroom that the stars feel more aligned than they’ve ever been.

It’s at eight years old that the possibilities flood his mind. His fascination with anomalies had long been more than just a passing interest. This room is the very testament to that, the books and drawings, the notepads with pages upon pages of his writings. His eyes wander to his hands in his lap, as if they held the key to everything. As far as he’s convinced, they always have.

This whole time, the answer’s been holding out its own hand to him. His calling.

Unveil the mysteries of this world. Chase the answers into the night to proclaim them come morning.

It’s in the same heartbeat that he seriously considers it that his chest swells something different, like an affirmation long waiting to be acknowledged. Like it was poised for this very second, he latches on to it with a resolve to never let go.

It’s decidedly at eight years old that he chooses a life devoted to explaining the unexplained.

With a smile spreading across his face, Stanford flips to a fresh page and starts to read. The path ahead him lies all but waiting, the thirst for knowledge his only compass. If there were ever a point where he’d learn to weather through the night, now’s as good a time as any. His world was his to govern, and it starts here.

In the bunk below, he hears Stanley snoring up a storm, and starts to chuckle.

* * *

Something changes when he hits his college years _—_ and that may be the understatement of the century.

Because five months ago, he was sitting in his old principal’s office with every opportunity in the world at his feet. Four and a half ago, he’d perfected his means to secure a future, and not even in a blink, it had all slipped through his fingers.

_‘Not that it was_ my _doing.’_

It’s been forever and a day since he’s seen his brother.

The whirlwind transition from high school to university comes like an arrow through a storm of white-hot anger. When your path is forged in the shortcomings that can’t even be called your own, there are fewer kinds he cares to feel.

It still stings if he thinks about it for too long.

His own brother. His own _twin._

It’s close to midnight, and there’s an untouched takeout bag growing cold at the corner of his desk. His eyes land on the stack of assignments beneath it. Tedious coursework to finish. Rudimentary papers to outline. This is his life now. Gone are the years of youthful abandon and dream schools, of longing for explanations to the unexplainable. Gone are the hopes he’d climb the rungs of this ladder easily.

_‘Not that it was_ my _choice.’_

The bitterness creeps in a lot easier these days, more than he’s willing to admit.

He combats it the only way he knows how, a callback to brighter days _—_ Ford grabs a book to rest in front of him, forgoing his bunk for the metal chair at his desk. He’s swapped science fiction for science fact, determined now more than ever to shatter the walls between them. However much harder he had to work for it, however longer, this was his to achieve. He wasn’t about to let anything else get in the way.

He could only dream of a silence like this from when he was younger.

But with how loud his thoughts are becoming, he’s starting to wonder if that had ever been a good thing.

* * *

There’s a different kind of darkness when you’re alone.

Fiddleford’s echo of rejection rings louder in his head than he wishes it had _—_ but then again, with the walls and walls of machinery, it’s hard for anything to go forgotten. The history of this lab is carved in its sounds, where the metal took every step, every breath to amplify for anyone to eavesdrop on. The whole world can hear his silence, and it says more than he ever has.

Without another voice to add to the very thin chorus keeping the paranoia at bay, a fresh bout of it seizes the opening. Any chance it gets, it plays like a broken record in his brain, the mantra that’s taken him hostage since the night the illusion fell to pieces.

Trust no one. Trust no one. _Trust no one._

Without another body to populate this tomb of a lab, the ghosts of what he’s done haunt him so much more easily. In the graveyard of his triumphs, he stands isolated, like the last guard of a post he should’ve abandoned when he had the chance. It’s too telling of what that says about him, where that leaves him in the end.

Because if your reflection is the only friend you have, he cowers at the thought of what his shadow might be hiding from him.

In an unhinged moment of impulse, he turns, eyes gouging at the man looking back at him. Looking, _truly seeing_ what’s become of him. Pathetic, he thinks, reduced to matted hair and stubble of neglected weeks past. He runs his fingers through it, spacey. _Pathetic,_ he knows, eyes tracing sign after sign, but…

Maybe he shouldn’t be afraid, after all.

He doesn’t recognize him.

_(but something else inside of him does.)_

From the deepest recess in his head, there comes a whisper. It’s in his own voice for a change. Like the soft nightlight in the corner of his childhood bedroom, it flickers to life with something warmer than this lab has ever been.

A thought. And he feels it.

The smallest inkling. The cry for help that’s been slow building within him, so muffled that he would barely let it pass as a murmur. Not if he could help it. But the bonds are breaking. He’s suppressed it for so long, it was only inevitable that it’d find a way out eventually.

He drove himself here, the outright denial of when to throw the life preserver.

But the signs are all but telling now, staring down the shell of the man in his reflection. Hollow eyes. Sunken cheeks. When a loose stomach wasn’t enough. When angry tears weren’t enough. When meltdowns and outbursts amounted to nothing, always questioning, always pushing the limit of _‘when is it bad enough.’_

If he were any less sane, he could laugh. So when do you throw it?

When the shadows grow behind your back, beneath your eyes, around your heart.

Ford’s hand curls tight into a fist against the metal, mind already made up. He needs to move fast.

Because it’s growing in the only place he can’t stop it _—_ inside him.

* * *

There are the few blessed days when night comes for him the way it did when he was a child. They’re rare.

The daily battles with his own head have rendered him weaker with each day. He’s just short of crawling into bed these days, if he doesn’t collapse somewhere else in the house first. When he falls victim to his waking hours, there are several avenues it could run. The decent. The agonizing. The empty.

When you’re the kind of tired that sleep can’t even cure, you don’t get much of a choice.

Today, he isn’t lucky.

The lights are off, yet the pale blue of early dawn streams into his carpet. Yet another reminder of another passing night and all the rest he’s lost to it. Another reminder of how little he can claim as his, when he still greets the morning by scavenging for a reason to get up.

When the thought of getting up at all is enough to spike a migraine.

He knows what comes after this. There’ll come the moment against his better judgement where he’ll rise, taking far too long just to take stock of it all. He’ll drag his feet through this house, lost and different. He’ll watch weary hours bleed into weary days, only to end up right here when it’s over. He’s a different kind of puppet these days, a slave to a routine that has yet to make a difference. This is what it’s like then, surviving without the strings. Try. Fail. Wake up and try again.

Rinse and repeat. This cycle never breaks.

He shivers, and sometimes it’s more than just the cold.

Today, like so many of them, it’s a losing battle. Outnumbered by the hours. Outmatched by the fatigue. The day’s ready and waiting to begin, and he wants nothing more than to slip under its shadow while the world turns on without him. Ever-present as they are, the dark tendrils of sleep are ready to snatch him up the second he wills it.

_‘Just for a little while…just this time…’_

For one honest moment, he’s weak enough to let them.

He closes his eyes and hopes for the best.

If this is how it is, how it was meant to be, he can’t take it much longer.

* * *

_(In some waning moment of consciousness, the last glimpse he catches is of the desk by the door. Atop it, the mountain of crumpled letters and scratched out narratives, climbing higher by the day._

_The simple, blank postcard collecting dust at its base grows more tempting by the hour.)_

* * *

He takes his coffee as black as the nights shrouding his head.

There’s a moment sitting at his table in the kitchen when it strikes him a little harder than it’s rightly allowed. Everything’s a reminder, now. How isolated he is. The wind of winter howling against his walls. The off-beat clatter of a furnace that never seems to work, the smell of toasted metal still trying its best. Déjà vu is cruel and unforgiving, now more than ever as a reality check.

He’s done this before.

_He’s done this so many times._

Ford stares into the cup of his sludgy safety net, liquid ambrosia that’s done more for his late nights than it ever did to help him focus on the task at hand. It’s been a long time since the excuse was ever fueling his research. It’s been ages since the answer was anything other than stay awake, stay awake, _stay awake or else._

_‘Stay awake before you can’t anymore.’_

But it’s a welcome change from the liquor carafe sitting in his room. He still shudders for those nights, when he thinks of them. Rock bottom. It’s an ugly place to be. One burning swig of something to quell whatever was toiling on the inside, and another type of burning just to keep his eyes open. One cup to distract him, one more to numb him.

They don’t go terribly well together. This is the lesser of two evils, and if beggars can’t be choosers, he’s begging the better half of him to choose this.

He downs the rest of the cup in one gulp, grimacing. It’s already cold.

But for as many times as he’s done this, there’s a promising addition tonight. When Ford lowers the mug from view, his eyes catch his beacon of hope in all its glory, basking beneath the moonbeams. The postcard that’s taken him a will and a half just to pick up from its place on the desk. The one that’s taken seemingly someone else’s courage entirely just to write.

Ford glances what few words he’s scribbled into it, and his throat tights.

It’s as raw as he’ll ever allow. It’s only fitting that it should come to this, the point where his thoughts are so run down, so desperate, that they feel just a breath short of primal. His last resort.

Because that’s only when he’d admit it, right?

Ford can only look at it for so long, before it’s too much. He closes his eyes, blowing out a shaky breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. This could change the course of everything. Two simple words. The only message that’s ever mattered. The one that’s been screaming for weeks from within him.

_‘Please come.’_

* * *

There’s a sickening, searing pop and the stench of burnt flesh wafting through the air to remind him that there’s a price with everything. No good fortune ever came to him free, and he’d be foolish to think this time would be any different.

Because he’s less of a believer in fortune and more in one of karma, and it comes as a sucker punch that’s feeling a little more than just deserved.

Between the sting blooming across his face and the stars swimming in his eyes, he makes out Stanley as he staggers closer _—_ but like a switch, it reignites the teenager within him, betraying the last shred of composure he was fighting to keep.

The rational side of him knows to keep it in check, that _now’s not the time,_ but when it comes, it brings a vengeance. Years and years of suppressed anger come rushing to the surface, the internal tug-of-war of whether to be remorseful or infuriated.

Stan’s the very picture of his worst fears come to life.

He keeps a hand clapped tight over the burn mark with teeth grit, in pain or in fury, but he can’t fault him for either. As if the callous half of his brain possessed his own twin, he says everything his mind has been fighting against. Stan tears into him before he’s given the choice of which half to listen to.

_“Some brother you turned out to be,”_ he spits, the rage dripping from his voice like venom. At his side, he clutches the journal in a near death grip. It twists his insides. “You care more about your dumb mysteries than your family?”

No.

_“Well then you can **have ‘em!** ”_

_No._

Just as it had in their youth _—_ when there was still time to make mistakes, still time to learn from them _—_ everything changes in a blink.

Stan shoves him hard, hard enough to lose his footing, but it’s the sight of the caution tape lining the floor that steals the air from his lungs before the impact does.

Because the impact never comes.

The sore seconds when his back should’ve collided with the ground are stolen, ripped from under him like the gravity beneath his feet. All at once, something clicks in both their eyes, and reality bends and blurs. Stan’s lost, startled mumble, stripped free of its poison, could break him right in two.

_“Stanford?”_

It’s been a long time since he’s seen the light _—_ of reason, of hope, of the end of this endless tunnel. The future that couldn’t wait for him always just a touch out of reach, just barely beyond his fingertips. What he wouldn’t give to have his brother’s hand within distance, this time.

This is as close as he’ll ever get. It won’t be Nobel’s and fireworks.

It’s cradling the very epitome of his life’s work in his hands, as worn and as tattered as him. It’s flashing buttons and blinding rays, a circus of color and switches to the mistake he helped build with his own two hands. Two fingers more sinister, two extra to remind him of his role of this.

It’s been a long time since he’s seen the light.

And when it finally comes for him, it’s nothing like he remembers.

It’s a far cry from the sunbeams filtering through the trees, chasing Eye-bats and gnomes and dreams of something bigger than himself.

It’s a farther cry from warm sands and sloshing waves, when hopeful eyes would search the horizon for the wonders lying beyond it.

It’s a mix of everything, all these years _—_ the lost tomorrows and bleeding todays, the missed moments, the wasted years. The shattered futures. It’s amounting to this, a makeshift goodbye of loose ends and lukewarm apologies, the crushing knowledge that _he’s still out there,_ ready to ruin. Ready to hurt.

It’s amounting to this, like a question mark to a life he’d only spent half of it living.

“ _—_ Hey, hey, Stanford!”

From below, Stan’s instincts kick into high gear, a split-second intuition as if reawakening the child within him. He’s seen in manifest in moments far less dire. Without regard for anything else, _he runs_ , thrusting his hands as far they’ll reach, like any farther and his arms will tear right out of their sockets.

All these years studying the unknown, and he’d never stopped to find out if wishes really came true when you wished them hard enough. Stan stares at him with all the desperation of a man convinced that if he wishes hard enough for the extra inches, he’d get them. But he won’t.

Because maybe this story was never meant to have an epilogue.

Maybe he was never meant to rectify this.

Mere seconds away from oblivion, it truly dawns on him.

That maybe, just maybe, it was only by some poetic stretch of fate that this hourglass would run out right now.

And like that’s all it was ever destined to, the anguish within him takes on a life of its own. With a dying wish for a miracle, the journal soars from his hands in search of ones more forgiving than his. His last breath is a scream torn ragged from his throat, his brother’s name like an epitaph to his demise.

**_“STANLEY—!”_ **

It has been a long,

long

time since he’s seen the light.

And when it finally comes for him, it swallows him whole.

**Author's Note:**

> _hope you're all staying safe right now ❤️ as always, thank you for reading and comments appreciated ♡_
> 
> [Tumblr Link](https://endae.tumblr.com/post/613687097591775232/between-the-never-and-the-night)


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